Google Search

Monday, 21 June 2010

I was looking on the Internet for an easy to follow guide to be able to setup a WHS to act as a VPN server. However the guide I found on a popular WHS website didn’t seem to work for me. So I did it a way I knew would work using Routing and Remote Access which is part of Windows Server 2003.

Why would you want to do this? If you are away from your home and you want full LAN access to your home network then VPN on WHS is ideal for this. I’m sure most of you will have used VPN’s to connect to your companies corporate networks before when you are remote working, its the same kind of deal.

You now need to configure your router to allow inbound the VPN ports to your WHS.

These ports are:

1723 TCP

47 TCP

How you do this will depend on the make and model of your broadband router. But basically we need to use NAT to port forward requests coming from the Internet (WAN) to the Windows Home Server on the LAN.

My test router was a D-Link DSL-2542B and I had to select Advanced Setup –> NAT

Its also sometimes called Virtual Server on some routers.

You might be able to see on this screen shot that I have TCP ports 1723 and 47 port forwarded to the internal IP of the WHS which is our case is 192.168.1.6

That’s it, you just need to setup a Windows Client VPN connection on your PC or Laptop and point it to the WHS domain name for your server and login with the user account you enabled for VPN access earlier.

Tuesday, 15 June 2010

I heard about the Photato Media Center plug-in awhile ago now, but I stumbled on their website again today, so I thought I’d install the plug-in and give it a look.

What is Photato?

If you are an avid Facebook fan and use it for sharing and viewing photos then Photato is a 'must have'. Built using the Facebook Platform and designed to run within Microsoft Windows 7 and Vista Media Center, Photato will enable you to view and interact with your Facebook photos through your TV.

Features

View all your Facebook photos

Browse your own and your friends' albums

Flick through tagged photos

Enjoy a full-screen slideshow

Designed for your TV

Runs in Windows 7/Vista Media Center

The first thing you notice about this plug-in during the Media Center setup is that the animations are great! The yellow post-it notes pan in and move around.

Media Center setup – Login to Facebook

Synchronizing with Facebook

Photato – Home menu

Friends photo albums

Selected friends photo album

Using the menu on the right hand side you can then start a slideshow of your friends photo album.

Slide show: it doesn’t seem to pan like the native Media Center slideshow, but the photos zoom in towards the viewer of the screen.

Back on the friends photo albums page you can also filter the photo albums using the options on the left:

Modified Date

Created Date

Album Title

No. of Photos

Photato is still in beta. I’m not sure if the development is still active or not? The plug-in did crash on me once whilst I was using it. However this plug-in is very good, especially if you are a Facebook addict and like to view your family and friends Facebook photo albums. Photato is visually stunning the animations are extremely well done.

I need to use Photato some more at home to really get a feel for it, but I am now wondering why I didn’t install this great Media Center plug-in before now?